Join us on May 16 - 26 at the Cinematheque Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro to discover films of all genres on nuclear issues and radioactivity. There are 52 works from 20 countries, including 9 world premieres. The Film Festival includes documentaries, fiction, animation and experimental art. This unique event is an opportunity not to be missed! We hope to see you there.

Exhibition

With photos in black and white, two Indian photographers reveal their perecption of the uranium mining in northeast India in Jadugoda, Jharkhand State. Two photographic lenses, two points of view: a temporary experience of journalist and photographer Chinky Shukla New Delhi, who visited the place of uranium mining with a scholarship for 3 months, and the point of view of the photographer Ashish Birulee, who was born in Jadugoda and is living there exposed to the risks of radiation every single day. What do they see? Each of both tells us his story in pictures. Thirty photos of both of the photographers are shown at the exhbition, which makes part of the festival program of the Uranium Film Festival, at the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art MAM Rio, from 16 to 26 May 2013. Indian film maker Shri Prakash organized the exhbition - the title "Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda" reflects Shri Prakash's film, of the same title, which will screen at the Film Festival. A part of exhibition will be shown at the Centro Cultural Laurinda Santos Lobo, morephotos will be at the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM Rio).

Acouphènes is as much an ecological fable as an experimental nursery rhyme. Under an ironic exterior, this short film sounds out our confidence in nuclear power. It all begins with the recollection of a journey during which the narrator, then a child, questions his parents about the big chimneys along the side of the motorway. Become an adult, the film maker decides to investigate. Here he is at Pierrelatte, a charming village home to the nuclear site of Tricastin. So far, all is well! From a cabin, he telephones the 'communication division' of he power station to find out what are the risks of danger. They assure him that the ingeneers are 'responsible and qualified people who rarely make mistakes'. One has to admit, he acknowledges 'that a car accident is far more dangerous than a power station that has no accident'. In the same vein, he talks to a lady chemist who confirms that the iodine tablets distributed free of charge only protect his thyroid gland from radiations. For the rest, he only has to follow the instructions of the authorities... Being unable to visit the site because of the terrorist threat, he finishes his tour at the 'crocodile farm' where the heat comes from the cooling circuit of the power station. With a sound track in form of a nightmare, the director confers a quasi apocalyptic dimension to his inquiry.

The Israeli army denied the use of uranium-based weapons in Lebanon. So, how can people defend themselves from potential uranium-related harm? What precautions will the Unifil troops in the area take, and what kind of testing has been carried out to prevent the risks? The documentary directly covers those questions.

A documentary that captures everyday life at a special nursing home for elderly atomic bombing survivors over the course of two years. Its director is Sakaguchi Katsumi, who has received high praise for his works such as "Sleep" (Nemuriyusurika). A facility for aged atomic bombing survivors exists in Nagasaki City called the Meguminooka Nagasaki Genbaku Home (Grace hill Nagasaki atom bomb home). To pass on their knowledge, the residents themselves put on plays based on their own experiences of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki for children who visit the home. This documentary sheds light on these atomic bombing victims as they struggle with the pain they bear and live with fierce determination.

Australia is facing what could be the largest expansion of our nuclear industry ever, with the proposals for increased uranium mining, nuclear power generation and a radioactive waste dump. This film looks at some of the reasons why we must continue to oppose nuclear proliferaton.

That is a plane story of people from the future which is getting to be real nowadays. The heroes are beautiful and helpless, but they continue to fight for their own happiness and purport. The story takes place in the town where the nuclear engineer may live in one apartment with his mother, the nuclear engineer and his grand-mother – the pioneer of nuclear industry. The story is really outstanding, it is about Ivan and Tania, Tania is interested in her science carrier and Ivan is not interested in anything, but Tania. The new third hero makes heroes to wake up. A lyrical comedy.

Atomic Mom weaves an intimate portrait of a complex mother-daughter relationship within an obscure moment in American history. Pauline Silvia, the filmmaker's mother, undergoes a crisis of conscience about her work in the military during the early 1950's Atomic Testing Program.

The film follows these mothers, each on a different end of atomic warfare, as they attempt to understand the other.

"Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda" is a documentary film on uranium mining and its deadly impacts on the tribal people living near the Jadugoda mine, mill and tailings dam, in the East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand (India). Unsafe mining, milling and tailings management by UCIL in this area for almost 30 years has resulted in excessive radiation, contamination of water, land and air, destruction of the local ecology, and lead for to genetic mutation, and slow death for the people of the region. The film attempts to depict the gross misuse of power by the authorities in displacing the original inhabitants of the region, the utter lack of concern for internationally accepted norms and safety precautions in the handling of uranium and its by-products, and their callousness of its disastrous impact on the people and the region.

Inspired by a dream of nuclear waste as a malignant tumour in the earths skin a woman journalist sets off on a road trip. She follows the route taken by the trucks carrying nuclear waste from the nuclear power plant in Cape Town to their destination in the pristine semi-desert region of Namaqualand. There she meets men and women of the Nama-Khoi tribe, who live in the area, and listens to their untold stories. Over 8 years, her investigation leads her to the homes of other communities living and working in close proximity to nuclear facilities - from nuclear fuel manufacturing plants to nuclear waste dumps and future nuclear power plant sites. Buried in Earthskin subtly demonstrates how energy and political power go hand in hand, and gives a voice to marginalized indigenous peoples who have paid the ultimate price for decisions made (about where we get our electric power) for the sake of political and financial power.

A scrap merchant in Goiania, a million-town in Brazil come upon a heavy metal box in a pulled down hospital. He was happy, because of its weight. What he did not know, was that he find a deadly dangerous machine who should kill his people. And contaminate thousands of innocent people in the town. He is fixing some help to get the machine home, and in the night start the work to cut it in pieces.

Then in the middle of it a blue star is shining. And vibrating! Like a star has fallen down! But it was a cobolt-canon from nearby hospital who have served to cure cancer but now was a killer. And the blue light was Cecium 137.

The merchant decorated his wife with it and gives his six years old daughter to eat on a bred. Some pieces was sold as far as Sao Paulo. Block after block of central town went radioactive and packed in barrels outside the town. The authority say that 482 similar cobolt-canons exist in Brazil, but where?

Around 5000 victims existing and a lot of military servants who helped to clean up the area was also contaminated.

And we filmed the accident and even years after to find out the vast consequenses of the first nuclear disaster in Brazil.

In 1950, the Russians discovered a rich uranium deposit in Apuseni Mountains, Romania. Shortly thereafter they developed a small city nearby and proceeded with the massive exploitation of the ore. The main objective: support of the Soviet military nuclear program. Almost two thousand Romanian miners were working day and night, around the clock, in four shifts. There was no concern for the labor or environmental protection. Most of the mine's employees didn't even know they were extracting uranium, but quartz. Now, in the former miner colony Baita Plai there are still 90 people living. A small and poor community in a place that seems devastated by an atomic bombing. Even though in february 2009 the uranium mine was officially decommissioned and the entire area entered in a environmental program, as an irony of the faith, the uranium comes back home as radioactive waste. By a Government decision, some galleries of the former uranium mine from Baita Plai were transformed into the National Radioactive Waste Storage.

"What would happen if I gave some of my dad's nuclear liquids to my pet rat?" the kid thought as he poured some uranium into his rat's bowl. BANG!! Curiosity Kills is a splatter comedy about a radioactive killer rat.

In the not too distant future, the newly formed Independent Republic of South Australia is the phoenix that rises from the ashes of a decaying and corrupt Australian Commonwealth, becoming wealthy beyond imagination on the back of uranium. However, the real power lies with Double Happiness Uranium, a massive global energy corporation secretly developing the ultimate weapon, a neutron bomb that targets the biological cells of select individuals.

An experimental film which tries to reflect upon the danger of inconceivability, using Hiroshima as a basis. This film does not resort to the use of the normally shown horrific scenes. Enola is an attempt to induce a process of learning, using unusual film methods.

A man breaks into an apartment carrying a big black backpack. He is wearing an anti radiation suit. The place looks abandoned the radiation levels are crazy high. Then he looks around and starts searching for things to steal. Soon he will realize he is not alone.

What happens inside an exclusion zone where no one is supposed to be? Is there any people left? If that's the case, are they suffering? This short is meant to answer all those questions.

Behind the power outlet in her room the little girl discovers a futuristic fairground run by the nuclear energy industry. Soon her fascination turns into horror. There is no way back, the catastrophe is near. The Fukushima nuclear accident is blueprint for the story: a society, confronted with the sudden disaster, acting like headless chicken - those responsible send their apologies.

In 2004, Fallujah in Iraq became the theater of a major showdown between american army and iraq insurgents. But what the american used in this war is secret. What kind of weapons did they drop? For now and since 2005, deformed babies are born. What really happened in Fallujah? Is depleted uranium the cause of the health problem?

Awards:
Investigation award and Remand Center Award in Grand Scoop Festival in Lille, 2011
Freedom and human rights Award in Al Jazeera Festival in Qatar in April 2012
International Committee of the Red Cross Award in Monte-Carlo’s Festival in June 2012
Public Award and Jury Award in Khouribga Documentary Film Festival (Morocco), 2012

Someone said "Fukushima, it's like a parallel world". It's another world. Apparently, from the outside, everything looks normal. Outside the exclusion zone of 20km, life continues as before, but not quite, this is only an appearance. The danger is invisible. My challenge is: how to make visible what is invisible.

A series of interviews of four Italian veterans affected by the Balkan syndrome and landscape images from Bosnia and Kosovo, where NATO used tons of depleted uranium weapons during the 1995 and 1999 Balkan wars. A series of landscape images from Bosnia and Kosovo, selected on the basis of the areas bombed by the NATO during the 1995 and 1999 Balkan wars, and by following the narration of four Italian veterans affected by the Balkan syndrome who have visited those places.

Since the 1970s depleted uranium has been used to enrich ordinary weapons, making them more explosive and dangerous. Since then, these ammunitions have been used in the most important conflicts. The downside of this story are the effects on human health and environmental contamination. Although the UN had recognized DU weapons as "highly toxic and responsible for irreversible danger to humans and the environment", US and other armies still utilize them. It is thought that between 17 and 20 countries have depleted uranium weapons in their arsenals. However, only the US and the UK have acknowledged using DU weapons, and both the Army and the Government claim that depleted uranium weapons are safe. This is in contradiction to the several studies carried out by independent institutions, which showed how upon explosion, depleted uranium sublimates the metal of the hit target into minute particles. These nanoparticles, once in contact with a living organism, can easily penetrate tissues or lungs, and remain in the body. And cause several forms of cancers, the so called "Balkan syndrome".

It is an answer to many of the myths surrounding the nuclear power projects, the world over. Though this film is set particularly in the back drop of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project and the people's struggle against it, it raises almost all of the questions regarding the safety of nuclear plants, development and its imposition on a people, alternate sources of energy and their contribution to the total energy needs, the lack of scientific know-how in disposing nuclear waste, the dependence on foreign resources in the running of a nuclear power plant anywhere in the Third World countries and the ups and downs of the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), in Kudankulam, India.

In the year 2022: After a serious meltdown in a German nuclear power plant the soil is contaminated and people live in constant threat of radioactive fallout. Low radiation vegetables are so precious that they can be proffered only in fine restaurants. Those can be ordered by the mysterious "Black Card".

So imagine how satirically: A story of a future where the food comes before morality.

This film is inspired to bring awareness to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in hopes that a nuclear tragedy like this will never happen again. "Hibakusha" is a Japanese term which refers to a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film was built around the story of Kaz Suyeishi, an 84-year-old survivor, who recalls her memories as an 18-year-old Japanese American student when the atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. Not only is the story compelling, but so is the form. Well into the project Steve Nguyen decided it shouldn't be a documentary with talking heads, it needed elements to bring to life the emotion of the time. And so the animated documentary was born, taking Kaz's memories and transforming them into animated reenactments. Steve Nguyen, who signed in from Los Angeles and Choz, from New York, began their creative collaboration in 2010 when Steve sought Choz out after hearing praise for his work as a director, including his work on two videos for the Far East Movement.

Synopsis:Tarapur Nuclear Power Project is India's first civil nuclear establishment came in existance around 50 years ago, displacing few villages near town named Tarapur. Once a protagonist visits those villages Dandi, Pofaran, Ghivali, Unbhat and Tarapur after 40 long years. He observes the situation of thousands of displaced people. He finds that they lost their traditional jobs and they did not get any new jobs, they lost their lands, homes and sea and they didn't get proper compensation neither they got the promised services and infrastructures like roads, water, electricity, medical facilities, schools etc. etc. Instead they got illness and unknown deceases. The high blood pressure and heart attack cases increased. Kidney failure and miscarriages and still births and complicated delivery cases increased. The kids below 5 years are suffering by mental disorders. Their IQ is low. The real cost of power is paid by those unknown and innocent people.
Film Website: http://highpowerdoc.webs.com/apps/links/

Synopsis: For a younger generation of Japanese, can their experiences of atomic bomb be truly understood? How does this memory stay alive for the coming generation? As the two drove down the American west coast visiting 18 survivors of atomic bomb as well as a holocaust survivor, they would hear the most intimate moments of their lives and reveal the cruel nature of psychological scars. With the vast landscape of American west in their background, the two reflects on their relationship to the contemporary history of Japan. Director Shinpei Takeda has fallowed the atomic bomb survivors in both north and south Americas for the last 5 years.
Film website: http://www.shinpeitakeda.info/2012/01/23/hiroshima-nagasaki-download/

Awards:
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD, International Uranium Film Festival, Rio 2013

"Our contemporary world is hipervisual. Moving images mediate our understanding of events. When this is a nuclear catastrophe, the relationship of the event with its visual representation acquires unprecedented dimensions, motivated by dissonant readings and the particular characteristics of radioactivity."

The spaniard Pablo Soto shows his doctoral research on audiovisual dimension of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis.

Currently the international mining company Cameco are conducting Uranium exploration in Kintyre, a remote part of the Western Desert in Western Australia. The traditional owners of the land, the Martu are currently in negotiation with Cameco over the future of their traditional country and are torn over issues of environmental conservation and financial prosperity. In 2011, Cameco arranged for a delegation of Martu community elders to travel to an established uranium mine at Rabbit Lake in Canada, which is situated in 1st Nation territory. A cultural exchange occurs between the 1st Nation and the Martu and as many questions as answers are sparked from the trip to Rabbit Lake.

The video includes footages from authentic shots of bombing, from popular American movies and from propaganda movies that was created by the American government during the "cold war". The footages were edited in a technique that reminds the Photomontage that was used in photography in the end of the 19th century and in the Film-making between the two world-wars. The Photomontage brings up questions of reality and fiction and deals with the zone of ethics and aesthetics.

In wartime Japan, an idealistic young doctor is sent to the countryside to run a TB hospital in the provincial town of Nagasaki. Dr. Akizuki forms close bonds with his patients and the community. Then, suddenly, the unimaginable happens. An atomic bomb is dropped, and the town and its people are devastated. Dr. Akizuki and his staff struggle courageously, without enough medicine or food, to help the sick and wounded. Dr. Akizuki learned that he was contaminated and struggle with his own radiation symptoms. Their spirit and dignity in the face of this unprecedented tragedy is the true story of how a community survived and was resurrected from the ashes of war.

The film Angelus bell was created in 2005, based on the true story of a doctor from Nagasaki, in memory of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Hibakusha Brazil for Peace Association, formed by survivors of the atomic bombs residents in Brazil, has the intention to publicize the horrors of those tragedies to the Brazilian population through this cartoon, so that humanity will never repeat the mistake of using a nuclear weapon . It also clearly shows the danger of Atomic Radiation, even in its peaceful use, as it manifests itself hidden, silent, odorless, permanent and will affect the whole planet we live.

In this short film, I aim to present the dangers that come with having a nuclear power plant. I did this by showing past nuclear power plant accidents and the outcomes of those accidents. Next, I decided to display the alternatives to nuclear energy, such as solar power and wind power etc. In order to show the people how there are more environmentally friendly and economically friendly way to generate power all over the world.

Sergiy and Sveta live in Chernobyl. Sergiy is a truck-driver at a radioactive wastes utilization plant. Sveta works at a radioactive decontamination laundry. Their work and their life are dictated by one unchangeable rhythm... Shooting on location in Chernobyl's exclusion zone.

Just outside Grants, New Mexico, is a 200-acre heap of toxic uranium waste, known as tailings. After 30 years of failed cleanup, the waste has deeply contaminated the air and water near the former uranium capital of the world. TAILINGS is a cinematic investigation into the pile that is gravely shaping the lives of those who are stuck living in its shadow.

In 2010, the United States announced the first new nuclear power plant construction in over 32 years. The "Nuclear Renaissance" was born, and American's long stared expasion of nuclear energy was infused with new life.

The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? Examines the cultural and environmental impasse of energy development in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The film takes its title from a National Academy of Sciences report that concluded that strip-mining in the arid Colorado Plateau could permanently damage the land, creating a "national sacrifice area." Four Corners explores the hidden costs of uranium mining and milling, coal strip-mining and oil shale extraction in the "Golden Circle of National Parks" – the homeland of Hopi, Navajo and Mormon cultures.

A world war had been destroyed the entire civilization. Everybody is wondering around lost, neglecting each other. Until one day a young girl finds the last flower on earth. Excited from her discovery she runs to people to tell them about the flower, but people do not care. At last a young man shows interest to the story. Together they take care of the flower and fall in love. With love, the entire planet grow and people begin to build civilization again. Meanwhile the war machine factories appear and the story of war begin again...

A powerful new epilogue (produced in 2008) shows how the film and Groundswell Educational Films' outreach campaign create news and rally supporters including Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). The Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform mandated a clean-up plan by the five agencies that are responsible for uranium contamination. Ironically, the US EPA's Comprehensive Five-Year Plan did not include Ms Begay's backyard, until she traveled with this film to Washington, DC and screened it on Capitol Hill in September, 2008. Together we are building a groundswell for environmental justice. Join Groundswell and Navajo Communities in this mission. We will continue filming and raising awareness until all Navajo communities impacted by more than one thousand abandoned uranium mines are cleaned up.

The Epilogue documents how one very determined grandmother, Elsie Mae Begay, travels with the film and continues to work with the filmmakers to launch a federal investigation into uranium contamination of Navajo dwellings and raise awareness about environmental health hazards in the Navajo Nation.

Moving, unforgettable living witnesses who survived two of the world's most momentous radiation crises: Nagasaki in 1945 and Fukushima in 2011.

They are interlaced with nuclear experts and archival footage, some shocking, illuminating the largely unrecognized connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and the growing global movements to abolish both.

The documentary is both a tragic and an inspirational example of courageous women in the face of environmental catastrophes and an alert to everyone today about the dangers of continued nuclear proliferation and nuclear power.

A film guide to understanding Japan – before and after the atomic catastrophe of Fukushima.

I lived in Tokyo for two years. Every day, I looked out the window of my high-rise apartment onto an endless sea of buildings. I was living in the world's largest city – together with 36 million people. Since the 11th of March 2011, the perspective has shifted. A film about how Tokyo is serviced and supplied, which is also a study in mentality, must necessarily make reference to a triple disaster.

In July 2012, I went back to visit the same fishmongers, bio-farmers, and sanitation workers in Tokyo and in northeast Japan, and I asked them how things had changed.

They gave impressive accounts of what they'd experienced since the spring of 2012 and talked openly about their fears and concerns, which still haunt them today.

They talked about the spread of false information about Fukushima, about withheld reports of water and sewage contamination, and about manipulated media coverage of demonstrations and other acts of civil disobedience.

U4 Uranium? is an independent feature-length documentary about uranium and nuclear power. The film exposes the true face of the nuclear industry and asks the question: Are you for or against the use of Uranium?

With unparalleled bravery, journalist Shanny Hazzia goes behind the scenes of one of the most dangerous black markets in the world. In an attempt to unravel some of the mystery behind the uranium trade, she travels to Congo where her rare documentation allows a peak into the shady dealings of “the yellow market”. Congo is a conflict ridden country where many regions are controlled by militias. With little or no supervision the main victims become the villagers who live near the uranium mines. A powerful piece of journalism that takes on a very hot topic.

Contact

Between the Seriana and the Vedello Valleys, in the area between Bergamo and Sondrio, lies the biggest uranium deposit in Italy and in all Europa. As it was discovered, back in the 1950s, the company Agip started exploring it, but the local population in the 1970s and 1980s boycotted the mine. The film tells the story of this protest. In 2007, as Australian Metex tried to secure the mine with a view of promoting nuclear facilities in Italy, the protest started again.

Enriched uranium has been found in the fuel filter of an ambulance in Beirut. Uranium has been found also in one of the analysed urine samples. UNEP too found uranium in all the sites that were examined but they considered that it was natural uranium. Both in their most radioactive form and in their depleted form uranium powders are highly toxic.

Six Japanese women offer brutally honest views on the state of the clean-up, the cover-ups and untruths since the nuclear accident in Fukushima, and how it has affected their lives, homes and families.

25 years passed since the disaster in Chernobyl. Since then, the exclusion zone stays closed to the outer world, uninhabited except for a few indomitables. A centenarian secret still stays asleep there and, in each search, a young Ukrainian will travel to the zone, finding along the way the answers he has looked for all his entire life.